A TEI Project

Interview of Evelle Younger

Contents

1. Transcript

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
(April 26, 1982)

EDGINGTON:
Mr. Younger, could you start by talking a little bit about your family and early life?
YOUNGER:
My father [Harry C. Younger] was a dirt farmer in Nebraska. His family had originally come from Kentucky. I gather my ancestry is not the sort of thing you brag about; I'm told that my grandfather was a first cousin of Cole Younger, who robbed the first bank that was ever robbed in the United States. The Younger brothers and the James brothers and the Daltons were all cousins; they all learned their criminal trade under [William C.] Quantrill of Quantrill raiders fame. But in any event, my father was a very honest, hardworking man. My mother [Mabel (Jansen) Younger] was also a Nebraska girl. I was born outside of a little town called Stamford; it had about 119 people in it then, I grew up in Holdrege and Hastings, Nebraska. My father went broke on the farm during the Depression; so he went to town and opened a butcher shop. He went broke three different times—once in Holdrege, Nebraska, once in Hastings, Nebraska, once in Pampa, Texas--all trying to make a go in the meat market. It was just the wrong time to be going into any sort of business venture because people couldn't pay their bills. After that he tried to sell pianos and didn't do well at that because he wasn't a musician. Then he found his niche; in about 1930 he started selling automotive equipment--hot-air heaters for Model A Fords, wheel weights, puncture-sealing inner tubes, a variety of things. His territory was the six middle western states; and like I say, he started in about 1932, I guess, doing that work, and he became quite successful. Along about 1940 or '42 he was making good money, and he bought the first home that he and my mother had ever owned, in Hastings, Nebraska, where I went to high school. They were very wonderful parents. I think my father had an eighth-grade education, and both he and my mother were determined that I was going to have an education, which was quite unusual in that area and in those days, because most parents, as soon as the boys were old enough to work in the fields, they'd pull them out of school and put them to work. But my father was determined that I would go to school. Fortunately, I grew up in a community in Nebraska where I was not deprived of anything. From the standpoint of resources, we were probably as poor as anybody in town, but the difference between rich and poor in a small Nebraska town is very slight. My best friend in high school was probably from one of the wealthier families in town, but he and I shared a lot of experiences. We went to the same summer camp. It cost ten dollars for ten days; I could save for a year and get the ten dollars. The fact he could pay much more than that didn't matter because there was only really one YMCA camp available. We went to the same church, played on the same football teams, went to the same parties; and as I say, the difference between rich and poor in Hastings, Nebraska, was insignificant.
EDGINGTON:
Was your father at all active or interested in politics?
YOUNGER:
Not at all, no.
EDGINGTON:
Or your mother?
YOUNGER:
No. They just were hardworking Nebraska farmers, and about all he thought about was his family and work. In later years—and he just died last year; my mother died in about 1958—my parents moved from Nebraska to California in '49, and by that time I had come to California after World War II and was a lawyer here. My father kept asking me to come back and go into business with him, and I kept saying, "No, I want to stay in California and stay a lawyer. I don't want to sell automotive equipment." And he finally decided if you can't beat 'em, join 'em; so my father and mother moved out here in 1949 and lived in Pasadena, in a nice home, not a mansion, but a very, very pleasant neighborhood and surroundings.
EDGINGTON:
Were they Republicans or Democrats?
YOUNGER:
Republicans, always. After they moved out here, they became more interested in— My father and mother sort of branched out, but they never got interested in politics, except insofar as they were very pleased that both my wife [Mildred (Eberhard) Younger] and I were interested. I think they were proud of whatever accomplishments we made, but they didn't themselves get involved. They were both rabid Republicans. My mother died in '58; and my father later remarried, to a lady who now lives in San Marino. My father's horizons were broadened; they traveled abroad a time or two. He played a little golf, and he built the house at Lake Arrowhead in 1952, and he used to like to fish; so those were about his only interests. Plus 'SC [University of Southern California] football; he'd always been a rabid fan of the University of Nebraska, and when he moved out here, he had to have a football team to support.
EDGINGTON:
A local one.
YOUNGER:
Right, and my wife being a very prominent graduate of USC, I had sort of adopted that school, and he did too. So, aside from his family, that was probably his first love—the Trojan football team.
EDGINGTON:
Was it either in Holdrege or Hastings that you first became interested in some type of law enforcement, of the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] in particular? As you were growing up?
YOUNGER:
No, I think the only thing that might have spurred my interest in law enforcement was the fact that one of the other farmers near Stamford where I was born was named Caffrey. I didn't know the family, but my father did. And one of the Caffrey boys was one of the FBI agents that was killed in the Kansas City massacre, when some outlaws that were in custody were sprung. I think that was in about 1932 or '34. And my father told me about the Caffrey family and the Caffrey boy, and I probably from that point on became more interested in the FBI than ever. I think that sparked an interest. I think I was just about graduating from high school when that occurred, and at what point I decided definitely I wanted to go into the FBI I don't know, but I suspect that that was the start of it. After we lived in Holdrege we moved to Hastings, and there was a very fine, small, four-year college there. I went there for two years and then the University of Nebraska for four, and got an A.B. and an L.L.B. degree. Sometime during the period when I was going to college, either Hastings College or Nebraska University, I definitely decided I wanted to go into the FBI. And I also decided that my ultimate ambition was to go to Denver and become the district attorney. Very few people in law school really know with any specificity what they want to do, and strangely enough I did, and I can't tell you why. I wanted to go to Denver because that, to me, was Shangri La. That's about the only place I'd seen outside of Nebraska; and Nebraska during the Dust Bowl was dry and grim, and Colorado in the summertime was green and beautiful. I worked as a lifeguard at a summer resort up at Evergreen, Colorado, during the summertime; number one, because I liked to swim, and number two, because I wanted to get to Colorado in the summertime. It was very pleasant. So during my stay in Colorado I fell in love with Denver and decided that's where I was going to go to become district attorney someday.
EDGINGTON:
Wasn't there also a try to get into the [United States] Naval Academy? Was that also somewhat of a career plan at one time for you?
YOUNGER:
It was, but it didn't last long. I was color-blind, and that in those days-- I failed the exam at the academy, so I was there just a couple weeks. It was after that that I came back and started to law school. I suspect that it was after that experience, when I started law school in Nebraska, that I developed an interest in going to Denver and becoming district attorney. I guess I abandoned plans for a military career and then started thinking in terms of a law enforcement career. But interestingly enough, I had both later.
EDGINGTON:
For a goal of becoming district attorney in Denver, when you finished law school you didn't go into private practice, I think; you worked for the FBI.
YOUNGER:
Right. I guess that was for two reasons: it sounded exciting to me, and I felt that would be a good background for anyone who wanted to go into work as a district attorney. And I'm not sure how profound, you know, all these thoughts were. I graduated from law school at twenty-one, and I went into the FBI at twenty-two. And as I said, how profound is anyone at that age? It may simply have been that it sounded like the FBI would be exciting, and so I wanted to give it a whirl.
EDGINGTON:
The FBI seems to have had such a broad public support that it seems to have been a good springboard for people that were interested in getting into politics. Did you find that to be the case later on?
YOUNGER:
I don't really know if that's true or not. I know that a number of ex-FBI agents have been quite successful in politics and business and others. Whether that's because they were pretty competent people to begin with—in other words, maybe the things that made them successful were the things that got them in the FBI to begin with. Certainly, in those days, the prestige involved in going into the FBI was really quite high. That certainly, for anyone that was interested in a career, was a good background; it established right off the bat that the person was honest and had a high degree of integrity and loyalty and, obviously, with a good deal of smarts, or they couldn't have gotten into the FBI. So to that extent, certainly, it was excellent background. but —
EDGINGTON:
It seems like it would have been quite a credential to place in front of the public.
YOUNGER:
Yes, I think you're right. I think you're right. Whether, for example-- Speaking of credentials, which would be the most attractive credential: having been in the FBI or having been in the military? When I ran for office it was after I'd been in the FBI, but I'd also been in the service during World War II and Korea. I guess all of those are good credentials. I've often wondered how important any one of them were; maybe the sum total of them were impressive.For example, during the days of the sixties, when we were involved in a very unpopular war, whether my having been in the FBI and having been a major general in the [U.S.] Air Force, I often wondered whether those credentials in those particular days were good or bad. I just didn't know. I was blessed or burdened with them, as the case may be: that's what I had done. But there was a time when neither law enforcement nor the military were very popular. I remember, when I was district attorney of [Los Angeles] County, speaking to some of the major universities around here and getting very abusive treatment, nothing personal, but because I was in law enforcement, and probably the fact that I had a military background made it even worse. [tape recorded turned off]
EDGINGTON:
Beginning about 1943 or '-4 is that correct, about the time when you left the FBI and then went to OSS [Office of Strategic Services] during World War II?
YOUNGER:
I was a reserve officer. I went into the National Guard in Hastings, Nebraska, when I was fifteen years old, a buck private, because you got twelve dollars every three months in the National Guard. I fibbed a little about my age, incidentally, to get in (you're supposed to be eighteen) . It later developed during World War II that so many of the people that were in the service had fibbed about their age. First, the army took a position that they wouldn't give you credit for that time. For pay purposes, you know, you got credit for the years. Then they found that fibbing was so universal in the Depression years that they gave everybody credit for it; so my military credit was back to the age of fifteen. Anyway, I got an ROTC [Reserve Officers' Training Corps] commission from the University of Nebraska when I graduated in 1940. I had been in the FBI two years when Pearl Harbor came along, and I was given a choice of resigning my commission and staying with the FBI or getting called to duty. I wouId not be comfortable resigning a military commission in time of war; so I said, "Call me to duty," and I left the the bureau on military leave. So I went into the army in '42. I was first with the Counter Intelligence Corps of the army and then transferred to OSS .
EDGINGTON:
Now, you were on leave from the FBI with the intention of going back when the war was over?
YOUNGER:
I didn't think about it. From '40 to '42 I was on active duty with the FBI; from '42 to '46, until I got back from overseas and out of the army, I was on leave, and I didn't go back. I didn't want to go back. Furthermore, what my intentions were at the time I went on military leave I really don't know. I guess I figured we'll wait and see what happens when the war is over.
EDGINGTON:
And then you served in the Pacific theater, is that right?
YOUNGER:
They called it China-Burma-India theater. Right.
EDGINGTON:
After the war was over, that's when you first moved to California.
YOUNGER:
Right.
EDGINGTON:
Nineteen forty-six, about that time.
YOUNGER:
Right. I got home from overseas I think in about December of '45. My wife had been born in Los Angeles, and I knew she wasn't going to move back to the Middle West. We didn't even discuss it; we just moved to Los Angeles. I wouldn't want to live anyplace else; but every now and then, in subsequent years, when I was introduced as a person who was a Californian by choice, I always pointed out, in all honesty, that I didn't have a choice: I married a native Californian, and that's where we lived. We never discussed it. When I came back from overseas I moved into the apartment that my wife had, with our son [Eric] , here in Los Angeles and took the bar review course, passed the bar, and went to work for the city attorney's office the day after I was admitted. From then on I've been a dyed-in-the-wool Californian, and this is where I want to live.
EDGINGTON:
In the period, then, from about '46 to ' 50 , you were with the district attorney's office?
YOUNGER:
I was a deputy city attorney for one year, and then I went to Pasadena as the city prosecutor for three years. I was there until I was elected Republican county chairman, and I felt, and the city board of directors felt, that since I was occupying a partisan position as Republican county chairman, that I shouldn't be professionally employed in a nonpartisan office like city prosecutor. We had a very happy parting of the ways; I went into private practice, but my painted name wasn't even dry on the door of my office when I was recalled to duty during the Korean War. So I was in service again from '50 to '52, and when I got out again, I went back into private practice. But again the paint wasn't dry on my door before I got appointed to the municipal court by the then-governor, [Earl] Warren. So that was in '53, and then from '53 on until '79 I was in public service.
EDGINGTON:
There must have been some background, politically, for you in 1950 to become the L.A. County chairman.
YOUNGER:
Yes. Both my wife and I became active in the Pasadena Young Republicans in about '47 or '48, and then I became Los Angeles County Young Republicans chairman in '49. And in '50 I became Republican county chairman, and the only political experience I'd had was in the Young Republicans and I'd worked on a couple of campaigns, and then as county Young Republicans chairman. But I think, as much as anything else, while the war was going on the leadership in the party got older and older, and I think the people on the [Los Angeles County Republican] Central Committee felt that it was time to get some new people involved. I guess I was a logical one at that point, but my political career actually had been quite limited. When I was Republican county chairman I didn't profess to know all the answers. I think I probably was very quick to seek advice from people who'd been more active for a long time, because you can count up and see that I hadn't been involved for many years.
EDGINGTON:
Did you have any political interest when you were in college, or in the intervening years?
YOUNGER:
No.
EDGINGTON:
Young Republicans was really the start, then.
YOUNGER:
Yes, both my wife and I got involved in Young Republicans and in the [Thomas E.] Dewey campaign, and we were gung ho. My wife was a national champion debater when she was in college, and she was appointed chairman of the speakers' bureau of the [California Republican] State Central Committee. While I was in the service, she remained active in politics and was a member of the [Earl] Warren delegation when [Dwight D.] Eisenhower was nominated, and she was active in that campaign. Both she and I had a fairly wide circle of friends in politics when I went into service, and so she continued while I was in, and by the time I got out, we were pretty well committed to some form of political career.
EDGINGTON:
Was your involvement in the Republican party hereditary, or was it connected to the friends you had, or was it ideological, or a combination of all that?
YOUNGER:
I think it was a combination of heredity and ideology. My father felt very strongly about it, and I was very comfortable as a Republican. I guess I was also challenged by the fact that we were a minority party and that we had to build. I guess that appealed to me more than jumping on a train where they were already rolling.
EDGINGTON:
In the Young Republicans, I believe that you crossed paths with Robert [H.] Finch when he was in college, or around that time. Do you have any recollections of working with him at all?
YOUNGER:
I may have known him; I'm sure I did know him, but not well. The first time I remember clearly meeting him was when he was also on active duty in the marines, during the Korean War, and I was on active duty with the air force. He and his wife [Carol (Crothers) Finch] and my wife and I met in an elevator in Washington, D.C., and both commisserated with each other. We'd both been recalled to duty involuntarily, and neither one of us were jumping for joy; but we, by the same token, were committed to doing our duty. We visited, and we saw something of them in Washington. Then after the war we were involved, again, in politics. In '53 I became a [Los Angeles Municipal Court] judge, and was then a nonpartisan officer. And I took it seriously when I was a judge: I didn't engage in partisan politics. So until I ran for attorney general [of California] in 1969, from '53 to '69, was in politics, but in a nonpartisan capacity. And my wife, during that time, ran for [California] State Senate and was quite active on the speakers' bureau nationally and so forth. We were, of course, interested in Bob Finch's campaign; he ran for Congress from the South Bay. And we've been friends over the years, but my recollection is that we first really became acquainted in Washington.
EDGINGTON:
That 1954 campaign that your wife ran for the state senate was really quite remarkable. Would you describe that a little bit?
YOUNGER:
Well, it was remarkable in several respects. You know, dirty tricks, they weren't just invented. My wife was running against the incumbent senator, a man named Jack [B.] Tenney, who was an extreme right-wing, real fascist type, and he was the head of the un-American activities committee in the state senate [Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California]. They did more outrageous things than the [Joseph R. ] McCarthy Committee [on un-American Activities] ever did. Among their cute tricks was that when my wife was running against the incumbent, Tenney, his campaign director searched and found a patient in the state hospital named Hazel Younger; when Hazel Younger was away from the state hospital on a pass to go visit relatives, they took her down and registered her as a candidate, and then she dropped out of sight. It was a tragic thing for her, and it was a very cruel thing for them to do. Their purpose, of course, was to confuse the voters. Well, it was such a dastardly trick that the race got all sorts of publicity, and so in the long run it may even have helped my wife with the publicity. Even so--it just shows you how careless some people are in voting--several hundred thousand people voted for Hazel Younger, and you know they were not intentionally voting for a mental patient, because--
EDGINGTON:
Several hundred thousand, in a senate district?
YOUNGER:
Oh, this was the county of Los Angeles; this was bigger than most state elections then.
EDGINGTON:
Oh, that's right. I forgot about that.
YOUNGER:
And my wife, in losing the race to the Democrat after she had won the [Republican] nomination, in losing to the Democrat, my wife got the second highest number of votes ever given a woman in the United States of America. Much higher, for example, than Margaret Chase Smith, who was a senator for many years. That held for many years, until, oh, I guess, a woman named [Frances T.] Farenthold ran for governor from Texas. But the only woman that ever had more votes than my wife was Helen Gahagan Douglas when she ran against Dick [Richard M. ] Nixon. The numbers were so great in Los Angeles County that a losing race in Los Angeles County got more votes than the winning race for governor in probably all but four states.
EDGINGTON:
So the Tenney race then was in the primary, even.
YOUNGER:
Right. And my wife won handily, then lost by a fraction of 1 percent of the vote to the Democrat in the general election.
EDGINGTON:
Do you attribute that somewhat to the divisiveness of a really dragged-out type of primary?
YOUNGER:
No, to two things: first place, she was a woman, and the state wasn't quite ready, almost; secondly, it was a question of tactics. There were thirteen congressional districts in Los Angeles County. My wife won twelve of them by a very narrow margin, over the Democratic candidate, Richard Richards. She lost the thirteenth, but she lost the thirteenth by such a margin that it wiped out the lead she had in the other twelve. That was in Jimmy [James] Roosevelt's [Twenty-Sixth Congressional] District in Culver City; that was the most Democratic district in the United States of America, The Republicans never should have tried to take that seat, from a practical point of view; it was absolutely impossible. But there was an attractive young Republican named Ted [Theodore R. ] Owings that got the Republican nomination, and a few Republicans got enthused and thought, "By gosh, we're going to beat Jimmy Roosevelt!" Well, it was silly. They went out and got enthused, and all they did was stir up the natives out in Culver City to vote for Jimmy Roosevelt. And whereas Jimmy might have been happy to just ride in very easily without carrying a big campaign, because the Republicans looked like they were going to stir things up, the Democrats really put on a campaign; and Jimmy Roosevelt's margin of victory was so great, that it wiped out my wife's margin in the other twelve districts.
EDGINGTON:
So Roosevelt was running for Congress at the same time.
YOUNGER:
He was the incumbent.
EDGINGTON:
He was the incumbent state senator?
YOUNGER:
He was the incumbent congressman in the district. But he brought out such a Democratic vote in his district that the Democratic candidate for state senate [Richard Richards] , running against my wife, just really got a tremendous boost from that one district.
EDGINGTON:
So it was sort of riding on his coattails.
YOUNGER:
Well, in a sense; but you know it just brought out a big Democratic vote, and Jimmy Roosevelt had the organization out there. As I say, I don't think there was one Republican out of a thousand in that area at the time; it was really heavily Democratic.
EDGINGTON:
In the 1956 campaign, were you active in the reelection campaign for Eisenhower that year, in Los Angeles 12 County politics?
YOUNGER:
No, I was on the bench, and I was certainly an interested observer, but I didn't participate actively in that. I really didn't get involved in Republican activities between the years '53 and '69.
EDGINGTON:
Was your wife involved in that campaign, do you recall?
YOUNGER:
What year now?
EDGINGTON:
Fifty-six.
YOUNGER:
Yes, she was heavily involved in the Eisenhower campaign. Let's see, you're talking about Eisenhower's reelection campaign.
EDGINGTON:
Right.
YOUNGER:
Right. She was also involved in his first campaign. She was on [Earl] Warren's delegation; but when Ike got the nomination, my wife was on his campaign committee and very active, and also in 1956.
EDGINGTON:
You have been described as moderate, or even sometimes liberal, Republicans at that time. Would that be accurate under the circumstances of the party in the 1950s in California?
YOUNGER:
I've never been too fond of labels because it's always compared-to-who. I've always been conservative when it comes to matters affecting the judicial system, law enforcement, and so forth. I believe that people who break the law ought to be punished, I believe in capital punishment, I believe that judges ought to judge and not legislate. In social areas I suspect I'm moderate or liberal. I believe in unions and their right to organize; I believe in Social Security, an enlightened welfare program, and that sort of thing.
EDGINGTON:
And so then when you campaigned for [Los Angeles County] Superior Court, that was an elected office at that time.
YOUNGER:
Right.
EDGINGTON:
You, I believe, ended up coming out against the right-to-work campaign.
YOUNGER:
Right. I'd always been opposed to right-to-work, before it became an issue that time. Right-to-work, to me, is unfair, because it means that a person can work in a factory, or be a schoolteacher, and take advantage of the gains made by a union on his behalf and never contribute to it. I believe that if you take the benefits of increased wages and fringe benefits, retirement programs, medical programs that the unions keep fighting for and so on, you ought to have to pay your share of the freight. That's basically my idea.
EDGINGTON:
Was your campaign in '58 just the natural kind of moving up from municipal to superior court, or were there other reasons that you decided to run for superior court?
YOUNGER:
Well, I felt that I was ready to go on to the superior court, and the original Governor Brown, Edmund G. ("Pat") Brown, I didn't think was very likely to elevate me. He and I have become very good friends over the years, but it wouldn't have been realistic, I think, for him to elevate somebody who had been the Republican county chairman. He would have taken a lot of heat from other Democrats, even though once I went on the bench I was purely nonpartisan and I did a good job professionally, and he knew it. Still, I didn't want to hold my breath until he appointed me. I ran against a man [Thomas L. Ambrose] who was eighty-six years old on the superior court. He was a fine old gentleman, but he lacked something in vigor. What I really resented was, when asked by the press, he said that he was going to run for reelection again and then resign and let the governor appoint. And I didn't think that's the way it ought to work. I think we ought to stop kidding ourselves; if the people are going to get to vote for judges they ought to get to vote for them. So I ran on that issue as much as anything else and never was intemperate as far as he personally was concerned. But I had a good background, and I was ready and eager; and so I got the endorsement of just about all the newspapers in town, and so on, and was successful. But it was not a very common thing in those days for a municipal court judge to defeat a superior court incumbent; it wasn't done in those days.
EDGINGTON:
Aren't elections for judgeships, even more so than other elections, won by incumbents?
YOUNGER:
Yes. Not nearly so much as they used to be. It happened very rarely before I ran. But in the last few years, [it is] a combination of two things: I think people perceive that Jerry [Edmund G.] Brown [Jr.] in a number of cases has appointed people to the bench who are not well qualified; and he's also appointed people who have a tendency to be unusually lenient, whereby and insofar as criminal matters are concerned. You combine that with the rise in crime and the increased feeling on the part of most people that, darn it, they want protection, which has caused, I think, a higher percentage of incumbent judges to be defeated than, oh, ever in our history. But it's still a very small percentage. The incumbent judge in the vast majority of cases still wins. Not as often as years ago, but still in the vast majority of cases.
EDGINGTON:
Well, we're not quite ready to turn it [tape] over yet. There's another figure in California politics, and that's Richard Nixon, who runs two campaigns: of course, the presidential in 1960 and then the governorship in '62. Could you talk a little bit about your association with the Nixons and maybe talk a little bit about your wife's possible involvement in those campaigns?
YOUNGER:
She, of course, while I was on the bench, supported — Are you asking me about when he ran for governor? Which campaign are we talking about?
EDGINGTON:
OK. Well, actually, I mentioned both of them, but the governorship campaign in 1962 would be--
YOUNGER:
My wife was very active in that; she was on his staff, wrote speeches for him, and so forth. And she was active as a volunteer in his earlier campaign for the presidency.
EDGINGTON:
Well, perhaps, excuse me, we need to back up a little bit, because in 1958 your wife had an accident that changed her career.
YOUNGER:
Right. So her participation—let's see, when did he run for governor?
EDGINGTON:
In 1962.
YOUNGER:
OK. She lost her voice, and for all practical purposes she was without a normal voice for seventeen years. She had a problem that was corrected surgically; but in the meantime, she did a lot of writing, and she did research and writing in the Nixon campaign, no speaking. In the earlier Eisenhower campaign, she had done a lot of speaking. That she was unable to do, but she was still active in the Nixon campaign as a member of the staff and, as I say, principally as a writer on California issues, like water, which she was very familiar with. Her father [Ray C. Eberhard] had been a very prominent and knowledgeable water lawyer and worked for the Metropolitan Water District, and she grew up knowing all about such matters. So she was a natural for some of those jobs in doing research for Dick Nixon.
EDGINGTON:
Your association with the Nixons went back further than that, I believe.
YOUNGER:
Yes, we were always very enthusiastic Nixon supporters. We were never close to them; we were never intimate. We met socially on a number of occasions, but I'd say we were not among their inner circle. When I was in the air force during the Korean War, in Washington, we had them to dinner on one occasion, I remember, and one of our ducks bit Julie, as I recall. And later, when Nixon ran for president the second time, I was appointed chairman of his [President's] Task Force on Crime and Law Enforcement and met with him in San Diego. [end of tape]

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
(April 26, 1982)

YOUNGER:
After he [Richard Nixon] was president and I was running for attorney general [of California] , I went down to [San Juan] Capistrano. That's not the name of their--
EDGINGTON:
San Clemente?
YOUNGER:
San Clemente, and met with him.
EDGINGTON:
You met with him personally, or was this also a group, a task force?
YOUNGER:
No, I think this was just a political deal where I was running for attorney general, and I went down to discuss it with him.
EDGINGTON:
Oh, I see. I'm sorry, I thought you were still talking about the President's Task Force [on Crime and Law Enforcement] in 1969.
YOUNGER:
I think they may have actually been both in the same year, as a matter of fact. Let's see, when was he inaugurated?
EDGINGTON:
In January of '69
YOUNGER:
And it was before and after that that I met with him as a member of his taskforce, and also I met with him after I got the Republican nomination -- that was it -- when I got the Republican nomination for attorney general. So, over the years, we were at their home for dinner once in Trousdale, and they were at our home in Washington; we met at conventions, you know, through long lines and picture taking, that sort of bit. So we were Nixon supporters, and happy and proud to be until the more recent unfortunate events, but never really intimately acquainted with him.
EDGINGTON:
In 1964, then you ran for district attorney for L.A. County. What made you decide to leave the superior court to do that?
YOUNGER:
Well, I was getting a little bored, I think. I'd gone on the bench when I was too young. Others have gone on at the same age and had no problem. I wanted to take a more active part in matters involving. oh, the administration of justice, legislation, and so forth, and in those days judges didn't legislate. That's something that was recently discovered. In those days a judge's life was rather calm and sedentary. Since that time, judges have become very activist in their approach, but I got sort of bored on the bench and wanted to be district attorney. Partly it was just ambition, too. The district attorney of Los Angeles has the number one prosecutor's job in the nation. It was a challenging job, and the district attorney was not running again, Mr. [William E.] McKesson. It was wide open, you know; so I ran.
EDGINGTON:
In that campaign in 1964, when you ran for district attorney, you continued your nonpartisan stance for the local offices and drew some criticism because you didn't endorse either [Barry M. ] Goldwater or [George] Murphy, Senator Murphy, when they ran.
YOUNGER:
Or Governor [Ronald] Reagan.
EDGINGTON:
In '66.
YOUNGER:
Right. That's true, I did.
EDGINGTON:
Did people really expect you to make an endorsement? Would that be acceptable in any event?
YOUNGER:
Some did; it just depends upon how you look at it. I had run as a judge and as district attorney on a nonpartisan basis. I got a lot of support from Democrats; I thought it would be cheating to run as a nonpartisan and then turn around and become a partisan, so I didn't. That's just the way I felt about it. John Van de Kamp, for example, felt differently about it; he endorsed Jerry Brown in the last election. This, apparently, is the difference in the way we look at it. I took the position, when I was district attorney, that if a governor, or a president, Republican or Democrat, wanted to put me on a committee, or a task force, where I could help in making recommendations relative to legislation or procedures that would improve the justice system, I wanted to do it. And I did. I served on Nixon's task force in that capacity, but I made it clear [that] if Nixon' s opponent wanted to talk to me and get my ideas, I'd be happy to give them to him, too. I just thought it was the proper thing to do. Actually, when I was D.A., Pat Brown and I got to be quite well acquainted and good friends, and he often consulted me on judgeships, for a logical reason: as district attorney, I had over four hundred lawyers out in the county, and if the governor wanted to know about a particular lawyer, I could call my deputies and say, "What about this guy? Check with him in his own community." I had the best network for getting information on lawyers and judges that existed. So I was able to be of service to the governor. But, no, I did get criticism from some Republicans, and when I ran, some of my opponents said, "We've been doing this, that, and the other thing for years, and he's not even been involved." That's the way it was.
EDGINGTON:
Was that also, in hindsight, or maybe even at the time, politically astute to be nonpartisan, especially in California with its great reputation for nonpartisan politics?
YOUNGER:
I don't know. Certainly most of the people that have held the office of judge and district attorney have done exactly the same as I did. I think the first reason is because it ' s the right thing to do. Was it astute.-" Well, I think it would have been kind of stupid for me, having been elected with strong Democratic support, to turn around and become a partisan official in that nonpartisan office. I would have had a hard time keeping a straight face asking my Democratic friends to support me the next time around. So, you know, I think it was both right politically and, as you say, astute. It doesn't take many smart people to figure that out. Until I ran against Jerry Brown, I always had AFL [American Federation of Labor] support too, and as you know, they're mostly all Democrats. But they thought when you're talking about rape, robbery, and murder, you're not talking about a partisan issue, and that's true.
EDGINGTON:
You also managed to do something quite remarkable, I think, when you were district attorney, and that is that you were able to get the support both of the black community and the [Los Angeles] Police Department very solidly, which at that time was no small trick, considering some of the unrest in the black community. How did you do that?
YOUNGER:
Well, first, I was honest. I made the same speeches in Watts that I made at the police academy. That's where a lot of people make a mistake; they think you can talk one way to one group and one way to another, and I never tried. And secondly, I really tried to do the fair thing. When we'd have a case involving a police shooting and so forth, I'd review it very carefully, and if the policeman was criminally responsible, we'd prosecute him, even though I would have bet anything that we couldn't get a conviction. But if the facts warranted it, we would do it, and we did. On the other hand, if the facts didn't warrant it—for example, they wanted a policeman's scalp-- I remember when [Ruben] Salazar was killed on the east side, the policemen did not do anything for which they should be criminally responsible, and we didn't prosecute; so I guess I'm proud of the fact that I was very careful and tried to make each decision the right one. I guess people respected that.
EDGINGTON:
You also were lauded for recruiting blacks for the district attorney's office, something that had been neglected before. Was that sort of a priority when you became district attorney?
YOUNGER:
Well, it was obvious that we had to get more minorities into law enforcement, not just the district attorney's office, because the increasing problems of law enforcement couldn't all be solved by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. I felt that we would have a better district attorney's department if it was more reflective of the community and had a greater number of minorities. I thought we would also increase respect for the system if we made it clear that minorities were welcomed and invited in. It just so happened that I was able to demonstrate my firm conviction in that regard, because the first person I appointed as chief deputy district attorney was a black, and I appointed him because he was the best-qualified person I knew. I'm glad the bestqualified person was a black, so I could demonstrate my commitment; but I didn't have to appoint some mediocre person to an important job. I was very fortunate that I had a black who was eminently qualified and whom I'd know for a long time--Earl [C. ] Broady, a former police lieutenant. He became a police lieutenant in Los Angeles in the days when it was pretty tough for a black to even get to be a policeman, let alone a lieutenant. And a very successful lawyer, wealthy lawyer, respected by everybody that knew him-- judges, prosecutors. I appointed him chief deputy district attorney, and he was a good one, and he later went on the bench [Los Angeles County Superior Court]. But I was fortunate that I could demonstrate conviction to giving minorities an opportunity by appointing an outstanding person. That opened it up. Blacks for many years took the position, "Why apply? It's a waste of time." And in recruiting I not only went to Harvard and places like that but I went to Howard University. We went after minorities.
EDGINGTON:
When you were D.A., also, could you evaluate a little bit the liaison between yourself and the attorney general at that time, Tom [Thomas C.] Lynch?
YOUNGER:
Tom Lynch was, and is, a very fine man. He was not running the attorney general's office; he wasn't enthused about it. He left the running of the office to his chief deputy, Charles [A.] O'Brien, and I never had anything but friendship and respect for Tom Lynch; but nobody claimed he was running the office in those days.
EDGINGTON:
The attorney general's office provides some support systems for local law enforcement agencies. Did you find that to be satisfactory when you were D.A., could you see that happening in Los Angeles?
YOUNGER:
Yes, although Los Angeles, with its resources, didn't need the support that was provided by the attorney general as much as many, many other cities. There were over four hundred cities in the state with police departments and fifty-eight counties with sheriff's departments. L.A. County and L.A. sheriff's [department] were pretty well equipped. But we provided laboratory assistance to many of the others, we provided lie detector examinations, we provided scientific crime detection facilities to the others, we provided narcotics training to many of the others. We did all sorts of things that many of the places needed desperately, that Los Angeles and the sheriff's office really didn't need all that much because they had their own resources.
EDGINGTON:
OK, you're talking, when you say "we provided," that's when you were attorney general?
YOUNGER:
Right.
EDGINGTON:
OK.
YOUNGER:
I did a lot of things as attorney general that had not been done before in the way of support for local law enforcement.
EDGINGTON:
What kind of relationship, if any, did the district attorney's office have with the Reagan administration, from 1967 to '70, before you became attorney general?
YOUNGER:
I think we had an excellent relationship. I knew Herb [Herbert C.] Ellingwood, who was his legal affairs secretary, and Ed [Edwin] Meese [III] , who was his chief assistant, very well; and they were both very knowledgeable law enforcement people. VJe worked together on legislation and so forth. I didn't work directly with Governor Reagan, but we had a very good relationship there.
EDGINGTON:
Did you know Ed Meese before, when he was D.A. in Alameda County?
YOUNGER:
Yes. I've known Ed for some time.
EDGINGTON:
OK. We go then to 1970 and your campaign for attorney general, and that was a remarkable campaign in the sense that there were some very important and very competent candidates for the Republican nomination. There were the Big Four of you. Can you talk a little bit about that?
YOUNGER:
You're right, but I felt, and still feel, that being a big county district attorney has advantages in running for that office. It has been so traditionally. Although much of the work is civil, people still regard the attorney general as the state's chief cop, and they vote often based upon their perception as to what his capabilities are in the law enforcement field. And in that area I had far more experience and knowledge than the other candidates.
EDGINGTON:
As far as stature is concerned, you have [John C.] Harmer and [C. George] Deukmejian, both state senators, and Spencer Williams, who was a previous candidate for attorney general and then an official in the Reagan administration. Did you decide to enter that race before the others, or about the same time, or after the others were in the race, do you recall?
YOUNGER:
I don't recall.
EDGINGTON:
Can you talk a little bit about that campaign and some of the issues that were involved?
YOUNGER:
Well, as I recall, the primary was, I thought, predictable and had a predictable result. We were all saying why we each thought we had the best background and experience for the job, and my background and experience was just better than the others: FBI, judge, district attorney, city prosecutor in Pasadena, that is, just a broader experience than any of the others. Whether or not I was any better a politician, I don't know, but I was better qualified for the job we were seeking. I don't particularly recall anything unusual about the primary.
EDGINGTON:
George Deukmejian was very critical of you in the campaign for a statement you made about organized crime in California. Could you discuss that a little bit?
YOUNGER:
I don't recall specifically, but what I believed then, and what I still believe, is that organized crime, if you're talking about the syndicate (the Mafia type, the "Godfather" type) never has and to this day has not gotten a foothold in California to the same degree it has in some of the eastern and middle western areas, for a number of reasons. For one thing, we have a higher caliber of law enforcement generally here. Our policemen and deputy sheriffs througout the state generally are better educated and better paid than they are in almost any other state. And because judges and district attorneys are nonpartisan--that 's something I talked about before and that I feel strongly about--that helps keep the system clean. And thirdly, because in California the attorney general can replace any chief of police or sheriff, just by the stroke of a pen, if he's not doing his job. So it wouldn't do the syndicate any good to take over a particular city or county if the attorney general could step in. You'd have to take over a whole state, and that's hard to do. In the East, for example, you have, say in New Jersey, where a city might be dirty but the state might be clean; but the state attorney general can't do anything about it. That wasn't so out here. So for all those varied reasons. Although I always said that organized crime keeps trying to get in, and they do, because this is a very attractive market to them-- If you were selling automobiles, you'd say, "Gosh, there are a lot of people out there that want automobiles." Well, if you're in the business of providing gambling facilities or prostitution or narcotics or whatever organized crime does anyplace else, you'd have to think, "Gosh, this is a great place out here, a lot of customers." But they've never really gotten in to the same extent they have in other places. But they keep trying in some areas. Of course, they took over pretty much in the pornography field, but that they could do without breaking the law, unfortunately, because of some of the decisions of the court. As you know, you could put out the most filthy magazines and still not violate the law, so the syndicate was in the position of moving in--it must have been a unique experience for them--they moved into that sort of field, catering to people's weaknesses, and didn't have to break the law doing it. Other than that, what I said then is the same thing that I feel now about organized crime. Always during an election, organized crime becomes a very big thing, and a lot of irresponsible statements are made about it. When I ran for reelection, William Norris, who was the Democratic candidate, was terribly intemperate and said I was soft on organized crime, and he tried to make a big thing out of it. It didn't work, but that's always a very— You'll probably hear a lot about that in this year's campaign for attorney general, too.
EDGINGTON:
You also emphasized a lot in your campaign consumer and environmental issues. The environmental issue seemed to be something that was right, as far as popular appeal goes. Was the consumer concern that large in the state at that time?
YOUNGER:
I think maybe we helped make it large; I think we were up near the front in the consumer movement out here, and now, as you know, all the D.A.s and city attorneys are involved in it. We took a leadership role, I think, in that area. In the environment, that " movement was well along, and I think we had a conscientious job there. We tried mightily to strike a balance between the environment and development, which was not easy to do. There were strong feelings on both sides, but that's what we tried to do.
EDGINGTON:
Were the other Republican candidates as concerned about those two issues as you were? Or did they stress those at all in the campaign?
YOUNGER:
Oh, they probably said they were, as I did, but I think we all-- Again, when you campaign for attorney general you campaign on the basis of who's best to be the top law officer in the state. You make speeches about environment and consumer protection and other legal matters, but the people really care about the law enforcement phase.
EDGINGTON:
The consumer and environmental things, really, is saying that the attorney general is the state's top lawyer.
YOUNGER:
I think the consumer and environmental things I developed as programs after I was elected; I don't recall talking that much about them in the campaign.
EDGINGTON:
Was school busing any kind of an issue during your campaign?
YOUNGER:
That was later.
EDGINGTON:
In the Republican state central committee convention up in San Francisco, that year that was a rather divisive type of issue, even in 1970. Do you recall any particular thing about that?
YOUNGER:
No, I remember that by the time I was running for governor it had become a very critical issue, and I took a stong stand as a candidate for governor against mandatory busing. But I don't recall that I or anybody else running for attorney general made much of an issue of that. I think it was, number one, a question of timing, and number two, I just don't recall it being a major issue until '77, '78.
EDGINGTON:
OK, I think that was the year that Judge [Alfred] Gitelson made the decision on Crawford [v. Board of Education of Los Angeles City ] , and I thought that might have entered in. Then in the general election you ran against Charles O'Brien, Lynch's deputy. What do you recall that stands out to you in that campaign?
YOUNGER:
It was a hard campaign, and again, we both claimed to have the most experience and background for that job. Other than that, it was rather uneventful. But of course "uneventful"--you go home at night when the campaign is going on, and you think, "Why did that so-and-so say that? He knows better than that. What a terrible thing to do!" You get all upset; but now, years later, it's hard to remember all of the details. I do know that that was a very close campaign. You see, he had all of the advantages of being an incumbent, really. He had been for years working with local law enforcement agencies, and every day the attorney general, Tom Lynch, would put out a press release and let him use his name, and so forth. It was a tough campaign, and it was very close. In one respect I have to give the Peace and Freedom party credit for my being elected, because most of those people that voted Peace and Freedom would presumably have voted Democratic if there hadn't been a Peace and Freedom party on the ticket; and if you add their total to his total as a Democrat, he would have won.
EDGINGTON:
And the Peace and Freedom candidate was Margaret--was it Margaret Buckley? [Marguerite ("Marge") M. Buckley]
YOUNGER:
I don't remember who it was.
EDGINGTON:
That's interesting. Was it difficult for you to raise funds because of O'Brien's connection to local law enforcement or to get endorsements from law enforcement agencies?
YOUNGER:
It was harder than it would have been otherwise, because a chief or a sheriff, if O'Brien had been elected, they'd have been in a very uncomfortable position; so yes, it was more difficult to get endorsements. Plus the fact that he was going to his own meetings; the A.G. is responsible forcalling his own meetings. They're basically training meetings for local law enforcement; so he goes all over the state. He calls them-- sometimes D.A.s, sometimes sheriffs, sometimes police departments, sometimes all of them mixed together. The attorney general has a very heavy responsibility there, and it did make it much more difficult running against him because of that. Under the circumstances, I got a tremendous amount of law enforcement support.
EDGINGTON:
In terms of fund raising, do you recall any difficulty in that sphere?
YOUNGER:
Fund raising is always difficult when you are running for a statewide office. It's just so many dollars. I don't know whether it was any more difficult running against Charlie O'Brien than it would have been against somebody else or not, I don't know, I don't know which one of us spent the most money; I know we had a deficit after the campaign. But I wouldn't attribute the difficulty in raising money to the fact that I was running against a man who had a close association with law enforcement. It's just plain difficult to raise money for a statewide race because you've got all the congressmen and all the state legislators (assemblymen and senators), governor, senate—everything. It was becoming an extremely expensive thing to run statewide in California, and I think when I ran for attorney general that was probably the first time when a statewide race really cost tons of money. And it has gotten worse since then, of course. That was over ten years ago. But we had a deficit after the race was over. If you win, you usually can get rid of your deficit in time, and we did.
EDGINGTON:
In 1970, also, the Republicans that were running for constitutional office had something called Team '70, that was sort of the group or ticket effort. Did you find that you got much support from, for example. Governor Reagan's reelection campaign, or any of the other campaigns?
YOUNGER:
I think certainly that Reagan's popularity spun off and was an advantage. How important the rest of the ticket was I don't know. Reagan, of course, was the most important factor in that; it was an effort on his part to help all of the rest of us that had been nominated, and I think in my case I always felt that it was helpful. I may have lost some Democratic support by tying myself to the ticket, but I probably picked up some support too. I was very much in favor of the ticket. I think that once you become a partisan nominee, you ought to run with your party, and sometimes that's hard to do, and sometimes it's easy to do. But with Reagan as governor it was very easy for me to do; I had great respect for him. Whether the people that are Democrats-- If Jerry Brown wins the nomination for Senate-- Assume, just for example that [Tom] Bradley— Whether Bradley and Brown would ever become a part of a ticket operation, I don't know. They might feel differently about it.
EDGINGTON:
Did you get any kind of financial help from the Reagan campaign, since yours was a very close race, much closer than the governor's race?
YOUNGER:
We might have gotten help from people who were also helping the governor; I don't think we got any direct money from their campaign. I don't really recall, specifically.
EDGINGTON:
OK. Did you have a kind of a state strategy? You were very strong in Los Angeles from your D.A.'s position. Did you have a particular strategy as to geography of where you would campaign heavily and where you had a pretty sure support already?
YOUNGER:
Yes, I'm sure we did, but except in very general terms I can't remember what it is. I figure that we wrote off the city of San Francisco; I'd have never carried San Francisco. If I had ever won in San Francisco, I'd have had to reevaluate my whole position, because everything I stood for, it didn't. We campaigned there because we had a lot of good Republican friends there, and we didn't want them to feel that we didn't care about their votes. But I knew we'd never carry San Francisco, and we never did. I think that's the only— When I ran for reelection, there may have been two or three counties that we didn't carry. We didn't give away anything, we didn't give up on anything, except if you call giving up San Francisco, because you just know a Republican running statewide is not going to carry San Francisco. I don't recall whether we carried Alameda County or not, but if we didn't, we came close.
EDGINGTON:
Did you get the [Los Angeles] Times's endorsement in 1970, do you recall?
YOUNGER:
I don't remember whether the Times endorsed. I think so, but I'm not positive. As you know, the Times over the years takes the position that they don't endorse in partisan statewide races unless they figure that there's some unusual feature. And they used to do more of it than they do [now] . Frankly, I know I always got the Times's endorsement as D.A., and I think I got the endorsement in 1970, but I'm not positive.
EDGINGTON:
The political campaign firm of Baus and Ross handled your campaign both years that you ran for attorney general, both campaigns. Could you tell a little bit about their involvement and maybe why you picked that particular firm?
YOUNGER:
Well, they were very active and, I thought, one of the more successful firms around. I think they handled it the first time; they didn't handle it the second time. When I ran for reelection, we had another campaign manager handle it. I don't think Baus and Ross were actively involved in political campaigns in '74, as I recall. I think they split up at some point, and one of them was not well. I've frankly forgotten.
EDGINGTON:
I think Herb Baus died before 1974, but the firm continued to have his name, and Bill Ross continued the firm.
YOUNGER:
And I don't know whether they couldn't take our campaign or whether we couldn't get together on the price or just what it was. I know the first time they handled it. We didn't spend much money on the election campaign organization; we didn't figure we had to, and as it turned out, we didn't. It was hard to finance a campaign when you're running for reelection and everybody thinks you're going to win, which is what happened in 1974. So we just couldn't spend all that money. Everybody said, "Oh, to hell with it, you're a shoo-in, and we'll spend the money someplace else." As it turned out, I guess I won in a landslide. But I've forgotten why we didn't use Baus and Ross. I've always had a high regard for the firm. I think it may have been a combination that they'd cut back, and they had lost some people, and money--a combination of all of those, I guess. But the first time they did, and simply because they, as far as I was concerned, were the best available at that time.
EDGINGTON:
Did they do campaigns for both parties, do you recall, or did they traditionally handle Republicans?
YOUNGER:
They were certainly primarily Republican, but I don't know if you could say they were exclusively Republican. Primarily. They did a lot of work for propositions and so forth, as well as candidates, and local races too.
EDGINGTON:
So when you were elected, then, and became attorney general, beginning in 1971, you reorganized the attorney general's office. Can you talk about the changes that were made there?
YOUNGER:
Yes. Turn it off a second. Let me go and see. [tape recorder turned off]

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
(April 26, 1982)

EDGINGTON:
All right, I had asked about your organization of the attorney general's office and some of the changes that you had made there.
YOUNGER:
Well, there really had been no organization. For many years, I don't think anybody had done any sort of an efficiency survey to see what was working and what wasn't. The law enforcement shop had a lot of talent in it, but poor direction and leadership and organization. So I hired a deputy chief of police from Los Angeles, Bob [Robert A. ] Houghton, and he and I reviewed all the activities of the law enforcement shop. I talked a lot to people on the legal staff, to get their ideas; you know, nothing very remarkable about the way I did it. (Oh, c'mon, Happy! Happy is the dog's name, for the record, and she's chewing on the wire.) I have talent as an administrator and an organizer, and I carried over some of the ideas from things I had learned in crime prevention programs and in the district attorney's office. We went statewide with that, and with the resources of the attorney general's office, we had a good program there. I was aware of the value of training films for police officers, and we had the help of federal funds. (I'm going to have to put that dog out. C'mon, Happy!) We developed probably the nation's best known law enforcement training program for local law enforcement. We used films, we used seminars, we used training schools. In the legal department we made changes based primarily on my conversations and studies with people in the office. I knew from experience the kind of service that people out in the state expected and desired of the attorney general's office, and I tried to match their needs with the A.G.'s capabilities. I was fortunate in that we had top talent, and once we organized it to maximize the advantage that we could get from that talent, we really had a going concern. It was a very well organized office, and it really functioned well.
EDGINGTON:
You expanded from, I think, two divisions in the office under Attorney General [Thomas C.] Lynch to four divisions, and the purpose of that was what?
YOUNGER:
Actually, it's from two to three, unless you count the Division of Law Enforcement. If you count the Division of Law Enforcement, then it's four; but that was already there. I added one division. Under Lynch there was the criminal division and the civil division. There were new problems and new programs in the field of the environment and in the field of consumer protection. Those were relatively new; they didn't traditionally fit in with either the civil or criminal field. So that's why we developed a third division, which we called [Division of] Special Operations. And anything that wasn't criminal or civil came into special operations.
EDGINGTON:
Now, then, the criminal identification and investigation, that wasn ' t a separate division, that belonged to —
YOUNGER:
That was within the Division of Law Enforcement.
EDGINGTON:
I see.
YOUNGER:
They used to call it C.I. and I., [Bureau of] Criminal Investigation and Identification. But we changed the name to the Division of Law Enforcement because it included many things. As a training school we trained local law enforcement. It included scientific crime detection laboratories, so it was more than just investigation and identification. But it had been known as the C.I. and I. for a long time.
EDGINGTON:
You kept a man by the name of Charles [A. ] Barrett, who had been in Attorney General Lynch' s office, and that was reportedly one of the very good appointments that you made, to keep him on. What role did he have in the office, then?
YOUNGER:
Well, he was chief deputy [attorney general] , and as I say, I think I know how to get good people. Even my strongest political enemies will agree that I always had a well-organized shop and knew how to pick good people. And Charlie Barrett is just an example of that. I didn't know Charlie, but when I became attorney general I started looking around for the best- qualified person to be chief deputy, and I would have gone outside the office or stayed inside the office, depending upon what conclusions I reached. I talked to a lot of people, both inside and outside the office, and finally decided that Charlie Barrett was the one. And he was a career officer; I guess nobody had ever appointed a career officer before as chief deputy, but I did it because I thought he was the best qualified. And he was outstanding.
EDGINGTON:
And he was the head of your staff.
YOUNGER:
Well, he was my chief deputy, my assistant, and he had responsibility subject to my approval over all four of the divisions. And he was great.
EDGINGTON:
Some of the sources have described sort of an eight-man staff that would be kind of, I guess, the head group that would run things in the department. Did that include the division heads?
YOUNGER:
It was really more than eight. We had what we called a "ministaff"; and it included the chief deputy, it included the chief of civil, chief of criminal, chief of special operations, it included the chief of the Division of Law Enforcement, it included a woman who was head of our public inquiry section. We got thousands of letters a week about consumer protection; or somebody in prison, why don't you let him out; or somebody outside, why don't you put him back in prison; why don't you pass a law; or so-and-so. We had a tremendous amount of mail from citizens that were entitled to an answer, sometimes kooky mail; but the woman in charge of that department was on the ministaff . The press secretary was on the ministaff; a special assistant who was in charge of police officer training, who made the training films for the local law enforcement officers, was on the ministaff, and those were our ministaff meetings.
EDGINGTON:
A couple of times a week, probably?
YOUNGER:
Oh, no, not that often. Maybe once a week. Oh, I'm sorry, that was the maxistaff. The ministaff was the chief deputy and the [heads of] criminal , civil, Division of Special Operations, and Division of Law Enforcement. That was the ministaff; that was just myself and five. The maxistaff was the one I was describing, which got up to about sixteen, and they'd meet once a month.
EDGINGTON:
And your ministaff would meet more often.
YOUNGER:
Oh yes, at least once a week. Sometimes we met by telephone, but that wasn't very satisfactory. The ministaff met frequently.
EDGINGTON:
At one time you said that you deliberately built conflict into the system so that you got advice from all different sides.
YOUNGER:
Right.
EDGINGTON:
How would you describe that as being divided up among your staff? What sorts of positions did —
YOUNGER:
I would try to get, for example, when the— You know, we had some environmentalists, rabid environmentalists, who didn't give a damn about jobs or profit or development, just save the snail darters and flowers and so forth. And good, you know; I wanted that kind. But I recognized that we had to have some balance too. So when I'd get an issue involving the environment, I'd try to get a devil's advocate who would take a contrary position to what the environmentalists wanted. For example, there would be a development, hundreds of millions of dollars, they were going to build some houses in this area; the environmentalists would want to go into court to seek an injunction to prevent the development from going ahead because of the environmental impact and allege that the environmental impact statement wasn't adequate, and so forth, So I would get somebody else on the staff who would argue that the environmental impact statement was adequate, that it was a reasonable development and should go ahead, and so forth. And I'd try to build that conflict into the system; so then when I made the decision, I could have the advantage of both sides.
EDGINGTON:
So you had some people who not only were rabid environmentalists, but others that really didn't care about the environment.
YOUNGER:
Right, as much, right—although it was hard to get anybody on the other side as rabid as some of the environmentalists were. They were a new breed in those days, and I'm very proud of the fact that I think I did achieve a good balance there. I think I have the respect in the office. Nick [Nicholaus C.] Yost, the man who used to work for me- I don't know if you know the name or not.
EDGINGTON:
I recognize the name.
YOUNGER:
He wrote me just out of the blue last year, just absolutely out of the blue, and he and I had not always seen eye to eye, and he just wrote out of the blue, and said, "I just wanted to tell you that you're the best administrator I've ever met, ever worked for, or ever heard about." And it was a real compliment from him. He was a real enthusiastic environmentalist, but--
EDGINGTON:
He was in charge of your task force on environmental--
YOUNGER:
Right. And I was very proud of what we achieved in this area. I think we did a good job, because I remember one time I went to San Diego to make a speech at noon; I stopped in Orange County for breakfast and made a speech, and I was picketed by some of the unions down there in Orange County for selling out to the environmentalists. I got to San Diego to make my speech at noon, and I was picketed by the environmentalists for selling out to the developers; so I figured if both sides are mad, I must be doing something right. But I did build the devil's advocate into the system.
EDGINGTON:
And that also carried over, then, maybe into the consumer area?
YOUNGER:
Into everything, yes. Everything. Everything where there was a controversy I would try to generate controversy among our staff. And I think it worked, generally.
EDGINGTON:
Your special operations director was Walter Deering, is that right?
YOUNGER:
Not Walter. Warren [H. Deering] . But he went on the bench shortly after that, and then the director of special operations, Sandy [Sanford N.] Gruskin was his name. Deering went on the bench.
EDGINGTON:
And for your divisional heads, you didn't want anyone with kind of an extreme point of view, as opposed to some of the other people under them?
YOUNGER:
Right. The higher up you go in the pecking order, in my opinion, the more moderation is indicated. I think the extremists of any point of view have a value but should not be in command positions. If you can take advantage of their talent, better to have somebody in a command position that can see both sides of the issue. I think in making my selections, that's what I tried to do.
EDGINGTON:
You also had regional offices that you would visit regularly during the week. How did those line up? What were the bigger or most important offices — Los Angeles, for example?
YOUNGER:
Well, the biggest office was Los Angeles because the attorney general's office being a law office, we went for the businesses, and there's more business in Los Angeles than anyplace else. The seat of government is in Sacramento; so from the standpoint of legislation-- and and we had a very strong program designed to study prospective legislation and so forth--there again, the head of our legislative division was on the staff too. We met with him, and we spent a good deal of time examining bills in the legislature, deciding what we were going to support. But the major offices were Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, and San Diego. When I became A.G., San Diego was not a regular office, but people were spending an awful lot of time and money traveling to San Diego; so we opened a regular office there. Other than that, we probably had twelve law enforcement offices around the state, where instead of sending an investigator from Sacramento to Riverside, we had a Los Angeles office and a suboffice in Riverside. Based on the traffic, we would open law enforcement offices, but there were just four main legal offices.
EDGINGTON:
Now, I think, there's one in Fresno.
YOUNGER:
There was not a legal office in Fresno. Is there now?
EDGINGTON:
I believe so. My question was going to be whether there was any kind of move by local legislators or someone to —
YOUNGER:
No. We had a law enforcement office in Fresno, but we didn't have a legal office there. And maybe the work now justifies it, I don't know.
EDGINGTON:
Also, as attorney general, you were part, sort of unofficially, of the Reagan cabinet.
YOUNGER:
No, not really. I did not go to cabinet meetings. I was not asked, nor did I seek an invitation. We got along beautifully with the governor's office, but there was no reason for me to go to his staff meeting because I was an independent officer. Independently elected. I don't think either he nor I wanted me perceived as one of his cabinet members. We both had our own thing to do; and as I say we cooperated well, but I was in no sense a member of his cabinet.
EDGINGTON:
That's an important correction, because there are written sources that indicate that you were sort of invited as an independent, but —
YOUNGER:
Never attended a cabinet meeting. And as I say we had good communication, but the governor has the right to expect that his staff will be advising him as to the best thing, you know, for him to do. I had a different constituency. We frequently, because of a legal position, had to take a different position from the governor's position; we tried to do so in a friendly and respectful way, and we always got along very well, but he was in no way the "boss" of the attorney general, the way in some states the governor is.
EDGINGTON:
Right.
YOUNGER:
But no, no. I never attended a staff meeting. I rarely went to the governor's office. Not because we didn't have respect for each other, but there was no reason to. Our staffs worked very well together, and we got along fine; but I never went to a cabinet meeting.
EDGINGTON:
OK. Later on, about 1974, there was a new office instituted, the Office of Criminal Justice Planning, that was part of the governor's advisory.
YOUNGER:
Right.
EDGINGTON:
What was the need for that?
YOUNGER:
Well, this was during the days when Washington figured that you can solve the crime problem by throwing money at it, and they just allocated enormous amounts of money; and so the Office of Criminal Justice Planning to try to spend the federal money intelligently in the state of California. I was appointed by the governor to be chairman of this council that decided how this money was to be spent, and the Office of Criminal Justice Planning was the staffing agency, the one that did the research and so forth, to make recommendations to the council.
EDGINGTON:
You're talking about the California Council on Criminal Justice.
YOUNGER:
Right.
EDGINGTON:
Wasn't that the intent for the council to do that kind of planning, when it was first put together?
YOUNGER:
Yes.
EDGINGTON:
But it was then necessary later on to have an office created to do that particular step.
YOUNGER:
Oh, no, the council were volunteers that got together once a month. The professional staff was the Office of Criminal Justice Planning. You see, I was chairman of the council, and there would be an assemblyman, a senator, a district attorney, a sheriff, a college professor--all these people.
EDGINGTON:
In all, about thirty members.
YOUNGER:
Yes. They would get together periodically, but the Office of Criminal Justice Planning was the one that did the research and the staff work, so that the council could vote on it when they got it.
EDGINGTON:
I was under the impression that the council had its own staff, had a staff of about a hundred people, that would work on things like this.
YOUNGER:
I think we're talking about the same thing, aren't we?
EDGINGTON:
OK. Well, I'm not sure whether I have this clear. There was a council and it had its own staff, and then in 1974, on January 1, there was a new entity created, called the Office of Criminal Justice Planning, and Lou [Anthony L.] Palumbo was the director of that. And that was under the supervision, I guess, or in an advisory capacity to the government. And I thought they were distinct.
YOUNGER:
Maybe it just became formalized; maybe the council staff became the Office of Criminal Justice Planning in '74. But you're talking about the same thing. I don't know what they called it prior to '74, but there was a staff that did the work that Palumbo's people did after '74. They did the workups and the things for the council to vote on. You know, here was somebody from Anaheim who wanted $500,000 for a certain thing. The council [staff] would get the request, and they'd work up a proposal and make a recommendation , so that all of us could vote on it. They did just the staff work for the council.
EDGINGTON:
And this is federal money from the Safe Streets Act?
YOUNGER:
Yes, LEAA [Law Enforcement Assistance Administration]. A terrible waste of money, but highy motivated. I mean, everybody had good thoughts, but they wasted an awful lot of money.
EDGINGTON:
As I understand it, the council distributed the federal money from LEAA for innovative type of programs. What kinds of things were done, some examples?
YOUNGER:
Oh, my golly. That was the purpose. We had to constantly fight to keep the money from going to buy batteries for police cars, because that wasn't the purpose of it. Oh, somebody would have a proposal for a crime prevention program in Watts or in San Diego. And here's what they planned to do: they'd say we're going to do this, we're going to do that, and so we need $50,000. The council would vote and give them $50,000. Somebody else wanted to train their policemen in how to handle drug problems in high schools, how to talk to the kids. Or somebody would come up with a training proposal, you know. Anything innovative. Our attorney general's training films were financed by LEAA, for example. That was an innovative thing. Instead of bringing every police officer in the state of California to a central location to train him how to make him more effective in an area of crime prevention or in narcotics and so on, bring him to a school, we'd make a film and send it down to El Centro, so he can see it there, much cheaper. That was the thing; everything you can think of. You know about grantsmanship. Hell, you've gone far enough in the university to know that the university survives by finding people that know how to get grants out of the federal government. It's a little tougher now, but it's the same in the law enforcement field. Every local community had its professional on its local staff. You see, not only did we have a state staff but the locals had a staff. Everyone was figuring out, how the hell are we going to get more of this federal money? And that's the way that the game used to be played.
EDGINGTON:
Now, there were a couple of specific—well, actually, they were called that, they were called crime-specific type of programs, and there were a couple on burglary; there was another on auto theft, and things like that. Those were innovative types of programs. How effective were all of these programs that were given grants by the council?
YOUNGER:
You can't generalize. Crime has been a problem since, you know, apes became men. There has been a constant effort on the part of the good guys in society to figure out how you handle the bad guys, and nobody has ever come up with any foolproof ideas. How effective are they? It's just really hard to know, but if you could give me some specific examples, I could tell you whether I thought they were effective or not.
EDGINGTON:
Specific examples in the sense of, you know, how effective was a crime-specific burglary program in Anaheim, or something like that?
YOUNGER:
Well, again you have to get more specific than that specific. What was the crime-specific program in Anaheim?
EDGINGTON:
I think it was on burglary.
YOUNGER:
I remember one where they went out and blanketed the community. Everybody went door to door, "Let me check your locks, let me do this. If you want me to come in, here's my credentials. I'll tell you what to do to protect yourself." That was either tremendously effective or not effective at all, depending upon your definition. It stopped burglaries in that area; it moved them into another area. So our reasoning was that if you do the same thing all over the state, you make it tougher. But that was a crime-specific. As I recall, a crime-specific was that LEAA was saying, "Hey, you have to spend 10 percent of your money on specific programs to eliminate burglary, or 5 percent to try to keep people from raping women" ; but some of the programs were very successful, and some of them were not successful at all.
EDGINGTON:
The council came under quite a bit of criticism from several sources, from some legislators, even some local law enforcement agencies, generally on the idea that the money was, in fact, wasted in some cases.
YOUNGER:
And in many cases it was a valid criticism. An awful lot of money was wasted. So much was spent on studies and studies and studies; you would have the state staff, and every county had a staff of professionals, just a tremendous amount of money. A constant argument about whether this ought to be spent and controlled at the state level or given to the local level. Oh, boy, I suspect it was-- The people involved were highly motivated, but it was such a wasteful thing.
EDGINGTON:
Did you have very much control over that situation? You were chairman of the council, but I think there was an executive committee?
YOUNGER:
My function was to get decisions out of the council, to make it move. I didn't try to control the decisions. I did try to be sure that they made decisions, which was their job. And I did it well. I moved it along, I got decisions. Everybody on the council had reams and reams of things to study, and I think almost without exception I didn't try to lobby them as to which way to go, but just that we have got to move on. And the process worked efficiently from the standpoint of making decisions. Now whether they made good decisions depended upon whether or not the majority vote reflected a legitimate and intelligent approach. I hope it did, but I didn't perceive it to be my idea to tell them how to vote. But, God, you know, a meeting, once a month, two hundred people in the room that wanted to speak for or against this, that, or the other thing, self-interest sometimes, sometimes not; but I moved it, and that I did well, I do well. Whether or not they came up with the right decisions I can't be sure, because I didn't undertake to lobby them on coming up with the right decisions. I was the chairman.
EDGINGTON:
And you really had no control, you really couldn't funnel things so that certain decisions would be reached?
YOUNGER:
Right. And even if I could have, I didn't try. I didn't want to cheat on it. These are controversial questions, and people didn't know for sure; so I wanted them to have a chance to vote their convictions. But I wanted them to move on and vote.
EDGINGTON:
And the argument that some of these things are just a waste of money really didn't have much of an effect on, maybe, some of the decisions that were made?
YOUNGER:
Well, probably everything that was suggested, somebody said it's a waste of money. And if most of the people thought it was a waste of money it didn't get funded; but then there were others that would say, "Yeah, well, it's not a waste of money. It hasn't been tried before, and they've studied it." So, if the question was. Is it a waste of money? the sheriff of Riverside County never thought any proposal in his county was a waste of money. He often thought something which somebody came up with in Alameda County was a waste of money, and vice versa.
EDGINGTON:
One of the other complaints about the council was that a lot of the grant money went to technological gadgetry, and that all kinds of new equipment were being bought but not a whole lot in the way of innovative type of programs were being sponsored.
YOUNGER:
That's valid, but again, whether it's innovative gadgetry or a waste of time depends upon what happens to it. The voiceprint, for example: if you spent a fortune on a voiceprint, would it pay off? Would we someday be able to make a recording of a kidnapper's voice over the phone and make a positive identification of it afterwards? I think so; I think we can. I don't think we're there yet. But if that was a question that came up, and you spent $50,000 on that, some would say that's a waste of time, others would say that's real enlightened progress.
EDGINGTON:
One of the other, the last, criticisms was that the council was supposed to do comprehensive planning for the state. To receive the LEAA funds they had to submit a yearly plan, and that the council just wasn't doing very good planning. Did you find that to be a valid criticism?
YOUNGER:
I think that was valid.
EDGINGTON:
Why was that so?
YOUNGER:
Because it's almost impossible to get people who have different ideas as to what we should do to agree on a comprehensive plan. Also, when you deal with professional planners, they get more involved in the semantics and the words and so forth, and they lose sight of their real mission. I have very low regard for the comprehensive planned principle, because I just rarely see it work. It means something different to everybody. But the criticism was valid; there was no very effective comprehensive planning, in my opinion.
EDGINGTON:
Were there any concentrated attempts to try to remedy some of these shortcomings that people had criticisms about in the council?
YOUNGER:
Well, everybody I knew on the council was very conscientious, and they tried to remedy the shortcomings; but as in any group, committee, council, everybody had a different idea as to what the shortcomings were. It's the typical idea of if you do what I tell you, you'll eliminate the shortcomings. A group of people trying to do the right thing in an area where there are no easy answers, that's really what it was.
EDGINGTON:
Well, to move to a different topic: beginning in '71, one of the priorities of the attorney general's office, as you described it, was to not only support certain types of legislation but also to be involved in drafting legislation at some point; and there was a package, I guess, of five bills that were introduced in '71. Could you talk about those?
YOUNGER:
Turn it off one second, I'll be right back. [tape recorder turned off] I felt that one responsibility of the attorney general was to recommend legislation in his area of responsibility, be it law enforcement, consumer protection, and so forth. And during the eight years that I was attorney general we always had a legislative committee working on the problem, not just commenting on the proposals somebody else made. If we perceived a problem, we drafted the legislation and went out and looked for a legislator to introduce it. And we felt that was part of our responsibility. I don't remember what our particular package was in '71, but we had a package every year, where I would go to the legislature and say, "Here's what we recommend." And instead of trying to be for everything, we'd try to pick out ten or twelve or eight really key things—comsumer protection, environmental protection, criminal law--and say to the legislature, "Here are the things we perceive to be most important. We recommend you do this."
EDGINGTON:
In this particular case I think you got Senators [Robert J.] Lagomarsino and Gordon Cologne to sponsor several bills on incompetent defense, trying to make sure that a defendant in a felony had competent defense. Now, one package you described as your "Onion Field" package. Was that package of five bills about defense?
YOUNGER:
Did you read the Onion Field book?
EDGINGTON:
No, I didn't.
YOUNGER:
You must, you must. It's [Joseph] Wambaugh ' s story about the murder of a Los Angeles policeman. That book [ The Onion Field ] demonstrated deficiencies in the system. It took so many, many months to try, appeal on appeal on appeal. It, procedurally, demonstrated deficiencies in the system, so we introduced a package of recommendations based upon the deficiencies that were obvious there. I don't remember if it was '71 or not. Now, you mentioned Lagomarsino, and who was it?
EDGINGTON:
Gordon Cologne.
YOUNGER:
If we came up with ten items on our legislative package, we'd try to say, "OK, who's best to carry this? Let's get a Republican and a Democrat that are highly regarded in this area. Then in consumer protection, let's get a Republican and a Democrat that are highly regarded— " We'd try to get good, persuasive authors. If you got any material on the Onion Field package, I thought it was well done. And interestingly enough, I called the publisher and said, "Hey, I want to give a copy of this book to everybody in the state legislature, will you send me the copies?" And they did. Were you aware of that?
EDGINGTON:
No. And you did that. Do you think that it had any effect? Did they get a chance to read that?
YOUNGER:
I don't know.
EDGINGTON:
They read so much.
YOUNGER:
Whenever you put up a package, you don't get everything passed, but you do some. I don't remember how we did that year, but that was our formula. We'd study all year long, what are the needs--consumer protection, criminal law, whatever--and so by the time the legislature convened the next year, we'd have our package ready to go.
EDGINGTON:
A lot of the bills proposed by your office and also by Governor Reagan on criminal justice appeared to get stuck in the Assembly criminal justice committee [Committee on Criminal Procedure] . Was that kind of a running battle that continued during the administration?
YOUNGER:
Over the years, the Democrats controlled the legislature, and they didn't ever want to have to vote on these tough bills. So they'd stack the criminal justice committee with liberals who would keep these bills from getting to the floor, but who were from liberal districts where people didn't really care much for policemen or district attorneys, so that if their legislator voted against a law enforcement package it wouldn't hurt him at home, but it would make all the other Democrats on the floor happy. So it is really true to say that over the years that committee has been the graveyard of many law enforcement bills. But that's why they created the committee; that's what they intended to do.
EDGINGTON:
In 1971 also, there was the Serrano [v. Priest ] decision, a kind of a bombshell that fell on educational finance in the state, and again it was up to the attorney general, I guess, to appeal that. That was your decision to appeal the Serrano case. Wilson Riles and Houston [I.] Flournoy were very much against that. Do you recall any kind of pressure or anything in the decision to appeal the case?
YOUNGER:
I don't remember?
EDGINGTON:
OK. Also, at the end of 1971, the reapportionment bill had been vetoed, and you were a member of the reapportionment commission that Lieutenant Governor [Ed] Reinecke called into session. Do you recall meeting with the reapportionment commission?
YOUNGER:
No, I didn't; I think I legally could assign some member of my staff, which I did, and I never attended.
EDGINGTON:
I see. We come to 1972, and one of the paramount issues that year was begun when the [California] Supreme Court in February struck down the death penalty in the state. Could you talk about that decision and then what you decided to do as attorney general following that?
YOUNGER:
OK, what is your question?
EDGINGTON:
OK. Could you talk about the supreme court decision outlawing the death penalty, and then the policy of the attorney general's office after that?
YOUNGER:
Well, if I read you correctly, we are talking about a decision where the Supreme Court said, "You're giving too much discretion to the jury, they might decide one man should die in a certain set of circumstances and another man should live."
EDGINGTON:
OK, that was the U.S. Supreme Court. I'm referring to the California Supreme Court deciding that it was cruel and unusual punishment, in February of 1972.
YOUNGER:
I'm not sure I understand what's your question. I have fought since I got out of law school the tendency on the part of the California Supreme Court to replace the legislature on these areas, and we have consistently, not only myself but I'm sure Senator Deukmejian has done the same. Lynch did the same, trying to persuade the legislature that this was a legitimate function of a civilization: to execute people who did terrible things to other citizens. But I guess I'm missing-- I'm not--
EDGINGTON:
Well, I was trying to lead into your describing your efforts, then, in the initiative process to restore the death penalty, and Senator Deukmejian 's effort in the legislature; and it was just leading— [tape recorder turned off]

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
(April 16, 1982)

EDGINGTON:
There hasn't been anyone executed in California since 1967. Did it really make that much of a difference, in your mind, whether the death penalty was legal if no one, in fact, really got executed?
YOUNGER:
I've always felt that people who say the death penalty isn't effective because nobody ever gets executed — The courts say that, and it's their fault. You know, they're winning their own argument. They're saying you can't execute anybody, and therefore the death penalty's no good because you can't execute anybody. I think it's outrageous for the courts to say that a people, through their legislature, cannot determine a punishment for a crime. Now, the supreme court doesn't say that if legislature passes a law that says if you go through a stoplight, it's going to cost you ten bucks to twenty-five, whatever; they don't argue about that. They don't say that if you commit a burglary, the legislature can't say you're going to go to prison from anywhere from one to four years; they don't argue about that. If you commit an armed robbery in a bank, and the legislature says that's going to cost you five years to fifteen years, they don't argue about that. But if you kill fifteen people, and the legislature says you're going to be executed, they say you can't do that. The courts are wrong; they've been wrong for a long time. It's just a very difficult decision, but I've always felt that the courts have usurped the function of the people in that area.
EDGINGTON:
Were you the prime mover, then, of the iniative in '72 to put that on the November ballot?
YOUNGER:
I don't think I was. I think we participated; I wouldn't say we were the prime mover.
EDGINGTON:
But it wasn't difficult to get the requisite amount of signatures?
YOUNGER:
No, and it wouldn't be today. The people really feel strongly that they have a right to be protected, and I don't really think that it was a difficult problem to get the signatures.
EDGINGTON:
Do you agree, then, with the U.S. Supreme Court decision that there shouldn't be the kind of discretion that if two people do the same crime, the court can decide that one of them is executed and the other one isn't, or does that —
YOUNGER:
You are getting into the most complicated area. And if you researched that to the same extent that you researched the other problems, you wouldn't believe it. What the Supreme Court first said was [that] the death penalty is unconstitutional because it's discriminatory. You let the jury decide, and they may decide in one case this man who has done this gets executed, and this man who has done this doesn't. They said the only way to make it pure and legitimate and constitutional is to say that everybody who does this terrible thing gets executed. That's what they said. One of the justices says, "Hey, you're going to cause trouble, everybody's going to say that you're saying the death penalty is all right if you make it mandatory for certain things." Well, that's exactly what happened. We in California and other states then changed our law to model it after the Supreme Court. And we said, "If you do this, it is so terrible that everybody who does this ought to get executed." Exactly what they told us to do. Then the Supreme Court turns around and they start to hedge, and they say, "That's not what we told you." Just an outrageous thing, but that's what they did. And the Supreme Court, they're human beings like everybody else, and that was the most outrageous thing they've ever done. So we changed the law to comply with what they said, and then they changed their minds. So who knows where it's going to be next. It's a constant problem. Judges, for the most part, do not recognize the problem, and most judges have never had any experience in the criminal law field and don't know anything about it; so it's an academic exercise with them.
EDGINGTON:
Was the response sort of to the fact that of the hundred and some-odd prisoners on Death Row, most of them, or almost all of them, were either poor or minority? Do you think the court was responding to that?
YOUNGER:
Oh, I'm sure that that's part of the problem. If you believe that being born under deprived circumstances gives you a right to commit crimes that somebody born on the right side of the tracks doesn't have, then, you know, fine. I don't happen to believe that. I think if a millionaire's son commits rape, he should be punished; if a person who was born in a depressed circumstance (his father left home, his mother was an alcoholic, on welfare) commits rape, I think he also should be punished. There are those who say no. I don't happen to believe in that system. I believe that you should be punished if you [break] laws which a society says you must observe.
EDGINGTON:
OK. Also in 1972, there was a very famous case on the environment called Friends of Mammoth [v. Mono County ] , and this was a case that the attorney general's office took a very strong stand on. Can you describe what happened there?
YOUNGER:
No, except that we did take a strong stand. It was not popular. We won; but I don't really, beyond that, remember that much detail about it.
EDGINGTON:
There was a lot of criticism of that decision, well, from the construction industry that somehow —
YOUNGER:
That's right.
EDGINGTON:
Did you try to balance that?
YOUNGER:
I thought we had done the right thing; I just beyond that didn't say anything about it. If they liked to criticize it, I said, "Be my guest," you know. We thought we'd done the right thing.
EDGINGTON:
Also, Governor Reagan and Assembly Speaker [Bob] Moretti asked you to petition the court for a stay on that particular order. Now, is that a discretionary kind of thing, that you can agree to do that, or do you have to do it if the governor asks you to?
YOUNGER:
The attorney general, as I say, is independent of the governor, the speaker, whatever; we don't have to do anything. I do not recall the specific event you're talking about. I don't recall whether they asked us or what we did, but I do know that, while we would consider their request, we're not bound to abide by either the governor or the speaker's request.
EDGINGTON:
I see, everything is decided on the merits, in your opinion.
YOUNGER:
Right, a completely independent operation.
EDGINGTON:
OK. In the consumer area, there were several things that the attorney general's office did. One of them was some legislation, sponsored in '74, to try to break what you called the chain of control of oil companies over retail gasoline sales. That seems to be a fairly radical type of proposal. Could you talk about that a little bit?
YOUNGER:
No, I don't— What's the status of that now? I don't even know. Do you?
EDGINGTON:
I don't think that the legislation passed.
YOUNGER:
Ask me your question again.
EDGINGTON:
OK. It seems to me that what you were proposing was to break the chain of control that you felt the major oil companies had over retail gasoline sales.
YOUNGER:
Yes.
EDGINGTON:
And my comment was that that really sounds like a pretty radical type of proposal, especially for a Republican attorney general to make.
YOUNGER:
I just don't remember enough about it to comment. I am very vague about what you said.
EDGINGTON:
OK. There was a celebrated case that we might use for illustration on consumer affairs, and that was the case of illustration on consumer affairs, and that was the case of William Penn Patrick, onetime candidate for governor; some of his business undertakings were challenged by the attorney general's office. Was that representative of the kinds of things the consumer group would do in your office?
YOUNGER:
Wasn't that sort of an endless chain operation?
EDGINGTON:
Yes.
YOUNGER:
And this just happened to be one of the more conspicuous ones that we were concerned with, yes. That was a fairly clear example of what we were concerned with.
EDGINGTON:
Now, he charged that the state was out to get him, that it was maliciously sort of pursuing this whole case. Do you recall that whole episode?
YOUNGER:
Not really. No, I don't recall him charging that we were out to get him or anything. He may have, I just don't remember.
EDGINGTON:
OK. Also, with the [state] Department of Consumer Affairs, the director, John [T.] Kehoe, and you did some investigations on consumer issues that were affecting senior citizens. In fact, I think that one of your main goals of 1972 was to look into consumer issues for senior citizens. Can you describe some of your concerns in that area?
YOUNGER:
Well, I think you've said it: it was one of our main concerns. But I've forgotten about the specifics. If you have a specific question maybe that will refresh my recollection.
EDGINGTON:
OK. Well, one area I was thinking of in particular was the whole nursing home situation, and what kind of action did the attorney general's office take?
YOUNGER:
Well, we took a number of actions, as you may recall, to close nursing homes when the state Department of Health [Care Services] said they weren't meeting standards. And we were aggressive in trying to put out information to them so they would know what was required; but you're right, we tried very hard to close up nursing homes that weren't meeting the standards.
EDGINGTON:
And you got a lot of prosecution-type action in that regard?
YOUNGER:
I don't know. My feeling is that we were more interested in administrative action to close rest homes that weren't doing an adequate job; we didn't care to punish anybody so much as to just protect the people in them and close them up. It's much easier to close them than it is to prosecute somebody criminally.
EDGINGTON:
So you would investigate it and then turn it over to the administrative agency that would be involved in that?
YOUNGER:
Well, more often than not, the administrative agency, the health department, for example, would investigate it and turn it over to us to file a civil action to close them up.
EDGINGTON:
I see. OK. One of your other duties as attorney general was on the [Commission on] Judicial Appointments: yourself, Chief Justice [Donald R. ] Wright, and fellow justice Parker Wood. One of the more controversial appointments was William [P.] Clark.
YOUNGER:
Right.
EDGINGTON:
Can you tell a little bit about that, the process of approving Clark?
YOUNGER:
Well, let's talk about Clark and Rose [Elizabeth] Bird.
EDGINGTON:
OK.
YOUNGER:
I believe the law permits the governor to appoint anybody to the [California] Supreme Court who is qualified. A person doesn't have to be well qualified, doesn't have to be the best qualified, just qualified. Now, I'd like to see the law changed; I think that's absurd. I think the governor, in appointing somebody to the supreme court, should be compelled to appoint someone who's best qualified. And that's not hard to determine. For fifty years, the bar association [State Bar of California] has been recommending to the governor, making comments on his appointments. Sometimes they say "not qualified," sometimes they say "qualified, " sometimes they say "well qualified, " and sometimes they say " qualified." They've been doing that for fifty years; so I would like to see a law requiring that the person appointed be best qualified, particularly for the supreme court. The law does not requies it; the law just requires "qualified." Bill Clark, I voted for because I thought he was qualified. He is a decent, honorable, extremely intelligent individual. He had a wife and children when he went to law school, and he didn't break any records there. He later went to work for Governor Reagan; he had limited experience as a lawyer. Governor Reagan appointed him to the superior court, then he appointed him to the court of appeal, then he appointed him justice of the supreme court. There were those that say he didn't graduate from law school; he failed the bar the first time around—this, that, and the other. My attitude was, he's qualified. He may not be the best qualified person, or even well qualified, but he is qualified. The governor has a right to appoint. So I took a lot of heat from the liberals, who thought, you know, a bad appointment. Chief Justice Wright voted against him. We argued at great length; I said that was wrong: the governor has the right to appoint. All we have to decide is if he's qualified, bare-minimum qualified, not best qualified, not well qualified; the law doesn't require it. So as you know he was approved two to one . Now, later, along comes Rose Bird. Same thing over again, same problem, only now the heat is coming from the conservatives. I say, "Rose Bird is not a good appointment. I can think of a hundred, five hundred people better qualified, but that's not the point. The governor has the right to appoint. If you don't like it, put somebody else in as governor, but he has the right to appoint." And Rose Bird was qualified. She was a good student in school; she'd taught at Stanford. There were 175 witnesses that appeared on her behalf, roughly--I don't know, maybe 165, whatever--and I took the position that I cannot say she's not qualified. I think it's a lousy appointment; but I think she's qualified, much as I said in Bill Clark's case. (And you know. Bill Clark used to be my friend, and I lost him forever there, because when I compared him, publicly, to Rose Bird, he resented it, and he's not been my friend ever since.) Now that's an interesting thing. I was saying, in effect, Bill Clark was an outstanding man. The liberals were out after him; and as a matter of fact, I think he did a hell of a job on the supreme court, and he's done a hell of a job in Washington. One thing about Bill Clark: people who start criticizing him end up admiring him. But in any event, I said in Bill Clark's case, he's qualified; in Rose Bird's case, she's qualified. And she was. I think it was a terrible appointment, but how can you say a girl who goes to a prominent law school, was high in her class, is recommended by everybody who has ever been associated with her—not one person appeared to oppose her-- The only ones I got in opposition were letters from people who didn't like her politics. Well, I don't like her politics. I don't like Governor Brown's politics. It was a bad thing. Anyway.
EDGINGTON:
So in passing on judicial appointments, you would have hearings where people could come--
YOUNGER:
Right.
EDGINGTON:
--and also you'd have the state bar report on them, and any other kinds of documents?
YOUNGER:
Yes, letters; the state bar report wasn't worth a damn, of course. You remember [Paul N.] Halvonik, the man who was busted for marijuana [possession] . I voted against him because he was caught going into [California State Prison at] San Quentin with marijuana in his pocket. Now, that's a straight felony, that's not a "wobbler." I took the position that lots of people don't happen to believe the use of marijuana is a sin, but it's against the law; so if you're going to be a judge, you ought to enforce the law. I really was concerned about that, but I lost. I was one against two votes. The bar came in there and recommended Halvonik. I talked to the president and said, "Did you know, when you voted to recommend him, that he'd been apprehended in San Quentin going in with marijuana in his possession?" He said, "No, I didn't know that." So I told the president of the state bar in this open hearing, I said, "Why don't you go back and talk to your board of governors and see if, now that you know this, you want to change your vote?" He went back (they happened to be meeting in San Francisco that day) and came back and said, "No, we still vote for him." Highly recommended. That's why I say that people have very little confidence in the bar association. Here's a guy caught coming into the penitentiary with marijuana, and the bar association said, "So what. We're still going to recommend him." And that's sad. I don't know if you followed that, but that was a very significant thing. If you didn't, check on it. One of the really remarkable things.
EDGINGTON:
On that occasion, of the Clark appointment, you were divided two to one. Justice Wright voting against. Did that happen often on judicial appointments, among the three, where there would be a split vote?
YOUNGER:
No. That's the only time that it happened, as I recall, when Wright was chief justice. Then when Rose Bird was chief justice, the only one where it was two to one was when I voted against Halvonik, and she and—what was the justice that just died?
EDGINGTON:
[Mathew O.] Tobriner?
YOUNGER:
Yes, [Tobriner] voted for him.
EDGINGTON:
I see. In 1974, Governor Reagan appointed a select committee on law enforcement problems, and they came up with some recommendations for particular legislation. The most prominent of those was to get rid of the exclusionary rule, and the other one was to allow juries to be composed of six people, they could have six-man juries, and they only needed five-sixths of a jury vote to convict. What was your position on that legislation?
YOUNGER:
I don't recall what position I took on the exclusionary rule. I'm now very much opposed to it and trying to get it changed. Whether I had taken that firm position then, I don't remember. On the other issue, I don't recall.
EDGINGTON:
Do you remember whether you had a role in the governor's committee?
YOUNGER:
I don't remember that either.
EDGINGTON:
OK. Finally—and this will be the final topic, I guess--would be your campaign for attorney general, which actually started out to look like it would be a campaign for governor. Can you talk about your thinking about running for governor--around 1973, I guess, you started to think about that: to run in 1974?
YOUNGER:
I don't really think I ever gave it that much thought because I was so excited and fulfilled about what I was doing, and I just didn't think that, even if I could have been elected, and I don't know if I could have been, I wasn't ready to leave the attorney general's office, because we were right in the middle of some very exciting things. And I also guess I wanted to some significant things before I asked the people to vote for me for anything else. I just really didn't feel it was time yet.
EDGINGTON:
Did Watergate and the atmosphere of it being a Democratic year influence your thinking as well?
YOUNGER:
If it did, I've forgotten it. I'm not saying it didn't, but if it did, it doesn't now seem like it did.
EDGINGTON:
Also, there was difficulty, I think, in raising money for the '74 election, especially early money, because the governor had his tax reform initiative, the special election of 1973. Did you find that to be the case, that it was difficult to raise money?
YOUNGER:
As I told you before, we had a heck of a time raising money. People said, "Oh, you don't have a problem, you're a shoo-in." Whether or not they really believed that or were just using it as an excuse I don't know, but we did have trouble raising money.
EDGINGTON:
Then you don't know whether that was related at all to the governor's tax initiative?
YOUNGER:
People don't have to have a reason for not giving money; all they need is an excuse. And the easiest one is, "Oh, you've got a cinch, I'm going to help other people that don't." And I don't know if they mean it or not, but that's what they say.
EDGINGTON:
Well, in the '74 reelection campaign, for attorney general, you faced Willaim Norris. Can you talk about that campaign?
YOUNGER:
Yes, but I don't think we're going to finish tonight, are we? Maybe we ought to quit there, what do you think?
EDGINGTON:
Well, actually, this '74 campaign is pretty much the last topic.
YOUNGER:
All right. William Norris, smart lawyer, active Democrat, he decided that he could win the race based upon the fact that there were more Democrats than Republicans, and he decided to conduct a very negative, cut-'em-up, smear campaign. It was a vicious campaign--he didn't know beans about the job he was looking for--well-financed; it didn't work. It didn't sell. As I recall, I won overwhelmingly, but, you know, he was ambitious. I don't have any quarrel with that, and he went on the bench, which is fine. But he just said, "Oh, the Democrats can win this one," and started out. It was a very underhanded, low-level campaign, but it didn't work. I had very little respect for him, and I was pleased that the voters said that they didn't believe anything he said. It was a vicious campaign.
EDGINGTON:
You were the only Republican to survive, I think, among the constitutional officers that year--
YOUNGER:
I guess so.
EDGINGTON:
--which makes the victory probably pretty satisfying, I would imagine.
YOUNGER:
The most satisfying thing, from my standpoint, is that I sometimes had close elections getting elected, but when I ran for reelection I broke all records, and, you know, that pleased me. Obviously I wasn't happy to lose the last one, but I won nine and lost one. But the people really told Norris and me, what they thought of his campaign, and I was very happy about that. But, again, I don't quarrel with ambition. He has good connections; so now he's a court of appeals federal judge. But he sure didn't get off the ground on trying to make me the bad guy.
EDGINGTON:
By "underhanded" or "vicious" campaign, are you referring specifically to things like making the so-called Geotek incident an issue?
YOUNGER:
Oh, even more than that. For example, Geotek, you know, I was stupid, I lost money. You get a good deal, you recommend to your friends that they go in; it didn't work out. He tried to make a big thing out of Geotek. But even more important than that, he used stuff that had been used in 1964, when Manley Bowler and I were running against each other for district attorney: "Younger is soft on child molesters. During the time he was on superior court, he never sent any child molester to prison." Well, of course I didn't, because the law required that you send them to a state hospital, Anybody who was a mentally disordered sex offender had to go to the state hospital; every superior court judge sent them to the state hospital. The bars were just as thick, and they stayed longer, actually, than if they'd been sent to prison; but they didn't go to prison, they went to state hospitals. So when he said I never sent anybody to the state prison, he was correct. Neither did any of the other superior court judges send anybody to prison. They sent them to state hospital. So that's the sort of thing that really-- You know, here's an honorable guy, allegedly, who's now on the federal court, he really should know better. But that's the way it went.
EDGINGTON:
OK. Do you have any overall assessments of the Reagan administration's performance in the area of criminal justice, during the first four years that you were attorney general?
YOUNGER:
Yes, I think he's a very knowledgeable guy in that area, and he surrounded himself with very competent people. Yes, I think they did a good job. I was very pleased to work with him.
EDGINGTON:
The principal people you worked with in Reagan's staff on legal matters would be Ellingwood--
YOUNGER:
And Meese.
EDGINGTON:
--and Meese. Do you have an assessment or an evaluation of your first term as attorney general? What impact did you have on the office of attorney general? What do you think were your main accomplishments?
YOUNGER:
I don't know if I could split the first and second term. I think I was a great attorney general. I know how to appoint people and use people; I know how to organize. Wiley [W.] Manuel, the supreme court justice who recently died, he never told it to me, he had worked for three attorney generals--let's see, Earl Warren, Tom, and I--four attorney generals--
EDGINGTON:
Warren, [Stanley] Mosk, [Thomas] Lynch, and yourself?
YOUNGER:
Warren, yes. And he said to other people--
EDGINGTON:
Pat Brown, I mean, instead of Warren, I'm sorry.
YOUNGER:
Right. And he said to other people, not to me, that he thought I was the best attorney general that he'd ever known of, and I'm very proud of that. And I plead guilty to that; I was a good attorney general. I know how to do it. I was very, very pleased. I was really a better career public official than I was a politician, a better district attorney, a better attorney general, than I was a vote-getter, although I won nine and lost one, as I say. But Jerry Brown, by contrast, is a better vote-getter and not, in my opinion, that good a professional at whatever he's doing.
EDGINGTON:
Well, your campaign for governor was really probably the first campaign that was an out-and-out political type of a--
YOUNGER:
Right. And he's a better politician than I am. I think I would have been a better governor. But, as I say, I was really a career public servant. Jerry Brown fascinates the media; they don't like him, they don't respect him. If I would talk with the media, they may like me and respect me, but he'd get all the favoritism in the press. It's really remarkable. He's a very unusual and attractive to-the-press guy, although, as I say, I don't think he's a good governor. But, you know, some people said I was dull, and maybe I was. I did my job very well, but maybe I wasn't as exciting as Jerry Brown. Obviously I wasn't.
EDGINGTON:
Do you think, during your tenure as attorney general, that you really changed the face of the Department of Justice?
YOUNGER:
I think you've got to ask some of the people that worked for me on that. If I said yes, it would be selfserving, and if I said no, it'd be dishonest. You've obviously talked to them, and it's a matter of public record, it's the people I talked to. I had a very good feeling about my service as attorney general. I'm very happy; I happen to believe that I tried very hard, and we got some good results. I was very pleased.
EDGINGTON:
OK, that'll do it. Thank you very much.


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